Review by Sven Davisson

On several
occasions I have found myself on the sidelines of discussions revolving around
young people and the Dharma. The tack these conversations usually take is
how to get the “younger generation” interested in Buddhism. As
the post-sitting discussion begins, I look around the room—realizing
that I am the only one present below the age of 40 (I am being kind). These
discussions rest on two assumptions: one, that the younger generation should
be practicing the Dharma and, two, that their Dharma will be the same as that
of those speaking.

While it may be that everyone can benefit in some way from hearing the Dharma,
it may not be that the language of the Dharma is the same generation to generation.
The youth generation may indeed be couched in a different vernacular, based
on different experience that is better suited to present those Buddhist truths
that transcend time and language.

would like to hope that these two books and their respective authors are
the first profound steps in shaping the Dharma language of generations X and
Y. Just like Bodhidharma had to bring the Dharma from India to China, members
of our generation will be needed to bring the Dharma from the generation that
preceded it.

Though with different life experiences and with different approaches, both
Dharma Punx and Hardcore Zen are the beginnings of a niche. They are two of
the first voices to emerge from a growing group of Gen X punks turned Buddhists.

Noah
Levine, author of Dharma Punx, is the son of meditation instructors Patricia
Washko and Stephen Levine. He is currently involved in teacher training with
Jack Kornfield at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. Levine himself is director
and co-founder of Mind Body Awareness Project, a program that works with incarcerated
youth.

Hardcore Zen author Brad Warner is a former member of the influential hardcore
band Zero DeFex and the creative mind behind the critically lauded Dementia
13. Warner currently lives in Japan working for the studio responsible for
the television series Ultraman. He received Dharma transmission from Zen master
Gudo Wafu Nishijima.

Both books are written in the first person with varying emphasis on personal
experience.

Levine spends much of Dharma Punx talking about the life that eventually brought
him to meditation and the Buddha’s teachings. Like most young people
he rejected the belief paradigms of his parents, dismissing both meditation
and Buddhism. He began hanging out in the punk/skater scene and quickly started
using the drugs endemic to that scene.

From
the plagues of this life, he was incarcerated several times. During one of
these stints in the hands of the correctional system, Levine finally decided
to heed his father’s simple advice and watch his breathing. It was through
this first step at meditation that Levine made his way ultimately to the Dharma.
He discovered the straight edge movement within the hardcore scene and began
to identify with Krishna Core, the spiritual side of the straight edge scene.
He began to attend workshops and spiritual retreats where he met the English
born monk Ajahn Amaro who eventually became his teacher.

In Hardcore Zen, Warner discusses his own road to the Dharma. Like Levine,
Warner was part of the American hardcore scene. He managed to escape the potential
for criminal activity and focused on the musical aspects—first as leadsinger
for Zero DeFex and, later, as the creator of Dementia 13. Warner ended up
moving to Japan where he realized on of his dreams and landed a job working
in monster films.

Warner
spends more time in his book actually discussing the philosophical aspects
of the Dharma. He includes a very telling explication of the Heart Sutra.
He paints in vivid detail the road that led him, very reluctantly, to receiving
Dharma transmission—completing the transition from punk rocker to Zen
master.

Important for their generation, both Levine and Warner deconstructs the Dharma,
questioning it every step of the way. Through this they extract the important
elements while leaving aside the more potentially loaded religious aspects.
In this way they begin to cast the Buddha’s truths in ways that are
more accessible to their generation—born as it is from skepticism and
not the idealism of the generation before—quoting Johnny Lydon, Henry
Rollins and Bart Simpson along the way